Re: neat symbol speedup

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Han-Wen" == Han-Wen Nienhuys <address@hidden> writes:

    Han-Wen> Hi there,

    Han-Wen> I present to you to the following trick. If you use a lot
    Han-Wen> of constant symbols in your C code, e.g.

    Han-Wen>    void foo (Bar * b) { ...

    Han-Wen>            for (very-often)
    b-> lookup_key (gh_symbol2scm("some-constant-symbol"))

    Han-Wen>            ...  }

    Han-Wen> then you can use the following trick with GCC to
    Han-Wen> eliminate runtime gh_symbol2scm() calls:

    Han-Wen>    #define symbol2scm(x) ({ static SCM cached; \
    Han-Wen> (__builtin_constant_p (x)) \ ? ((cached) ? cached :
    Han-Wen> cached = gh_symbol2scm((char*)x)) \ : gh_symbol2scm(x);
    Han-Wen> })

Isn't this just an application of standard common sense when looking
to improve performance?  It's pretty obvious that you shouldn't do
unnecessary and repetitious computation inside a loop, especially when
it involves processing a string.

Or am I missing something extra in the GCC stuff?

        Neil